Biography

Domenick Turturro (1936-2002) is known for his all-over patterned paintings. While the application is gestural, there is usually a shape or form particular to each work. Sometimes the shapes are fan or flower-like, and may even reference printed patterns. Using a varied color palette, Turturro experiments with the figure and ground by creating fields of wild yet controlled arrangements. The boundary between foreground and background is often blurred due to the balanced treatment of negative and positive forms. Thus a "push-pull" effect is created giving the work a dynamic quality not unlike the works of Mark Tobey or Jackson Pollock.

Turturro was born in New York in 1936. He attended Cooper Union and Pratt Institute in New York. His work is in several notable collections such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Witherspoon Museum, North Carolina, and Greenville County Museum, South Carolina.